** Fish **

Last Sunday, 30 Sep 2007, I bought 2 gold fishes, a jar and a few other things that are required for fish rearing. Kaushal and I have been planning of buying a fish tank for a long time and at last, we decided and went ahead with the purchase this week, despite the usual vociferous protest from Appa.

Gold fish is a sensitive variety of fish, which requires air pump and so, that too is in our kitty now. I am being extra careful in its maintenance; I change water and clean the jar every day. Cant use bleached or chlorinated water... hence, I use the can (tube) water that we buy for drinking purposes. Next is the feed. Gold fishes are to be fed very little - because they either die of over feeding or from being under fed !! I am just learning the nitty gritties of fish rearing and its really interesting. I have started searching www for all sorts of info about Gold fish. From what I have gathered from net so far, it seems that the variety I have is "fan-tail" gold fish :). The very difficult part is to identify the gender - and I think I have a real pair (one male and one female) with me now. However breeding is a very difficult thing to do - as they eat the eggs and we have to filter it out ASAP. The whole breeding process is called spawning. But filtering out eggs is a difficult and tough art !! Despite all the difficulties and pain, watching a pair, swim and dance in water is treat to eyes. While saying this, YES, I do understand that arresting a living thing in a small jar to serve as a visual treat to me is not acceptable. Nevertheless, I have decided to go ahead with my new hobby for some time from now.

-Gowri..